It’s Not Just Paying Rent, It’s Forced Confiscation

Yesterday was chatting with a friend who lives in Lakeview.  It’s a neighborhood north of the Loop in Chicago.  Wrigley Field is in Lakeview.  They just got their new property tax bill.  

They bought the place four years ago.  The tax bill was $11,000, which isn’t cheap.  It’s a condominium.  It was just re-assessed and the new tax bill is $33,000.  

Table shows CPS’ property tax revenues from FY1991 through FY2019: https://t.co/UWKeWpLK02 pic.twitter.com/Q1cXrzxMUh— The Civic Federation (@CivicFederation) August 13, 2018

Uh, no one’s income went up by that and the rate of inflation was pretty tame during that time.  

My friend Mark Glennon at Wirepoints has been all over this for a while.  I think most Chicagoans are okay paying a bit more in tax than most people.  We live in a city.  Cities have more needs than rural areas.  The tax bite is always higher.  

The local media have been on the fringes of this.  It’s hard for them to report on it without gritting their teeth because virtually all of them trend to the left side of the aisle politically.  They are trying to blame Jim Edgar now but it’s pretty hard for any sane person not to see how problems in the city and county is one party’s doing.  If the media is upset about fake news, it’s because they have brought it on themselves.

People might not know this.  There are hidden costs in buildings too.  For example, homeowners association fees (HOA) are also a part of your monthly spend.  They might include cable, water and other services.  Another component in a lot of buildings is doorman.  Of course, in Chicago doormen are unionized.  Their salaries and benefits are very high and never go down.  Neither do the costs of cable, water, internet and electric and by the way the city charges fees and taxes on those too.  

My friend that saw their taxes triple also saw hikes in their HOA fees.  Of course, now Chicago wants to do basic income.  Maybe they should be giving it to the condo owners in Lakeview…

The other thing the city and county do is pass mandates.  For example, you have to get your tuck pointing looked at every three years.  In a building I used to live in, that was a $750,000 bill.  Of course, they’d always find something wrong so the bill might be higher.  The state passed a rule that was tough on cooperative buildings. We don’t have a lot of them in Chicago but they have a lot of them in NYC.  Co-ops weren’t allowed to “make money”.  In the past, we’d “make money” to bank for future building maintenance like tuck pointing, boilers, elevators and risers.  Now, residents just get a special bill.  

I am sure you have heard about all the shootings in Chicago. That happens in specific neighborhoods.   But, in my neighborhood of Lincoln Park, assaults, rapes and muggings are at all time highs compared to the last ten years.  It’s gotten so bad, one block I know of hired its own private security force. I used to laugh at the gated communities in some parts of the US but you could see it happening now.   I can’t even drive to the end of my alley or street and not see rats. 

We have reached a point where we have forced confiscation of income in the city of Chicago.  Democrats are running on a platform to execute the same system in the entire state.  Yet, they themselves don’t want to adhere to the same standards and laws.

This is just bad government policy and we see it over and over again.  Venezuela enacts bad policy and winds up hurting its people.  Turkey enacts bad policy and starts the downward spiral that will lead to chaos.  Plenty of examples and they all start with humans who are more concerned with keeping power and enforcing power than the welfare of their citizens. 

It is impossible to be a middle class person and have a decent standard of living with a decent education for your children in Chicago anymore.  It is no wonder so many people are moving out.  We are on the road to a city of lower middle class and ultra wealthy.  That’s not the Chicago I like.